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A jam submission

The Key to VictoryView project page

Mark Dowson

Submitted by Byron-Haze — 4 days, 11 hours before the deadline

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The Key to Victory's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Overall	#2	3.905	3.905
Gamelike elements, items, multiple paths etc	#2	4.143	4.143
Clever use of the 'key' theme	#2	3.714	3.714
Overall engagement	#3	3.857	3.857

Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Comments

ultimatedestruct3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

This. Was. Awesome!

When I first saw the stats I was worried that it was going to use an over-complicated D&D-like stat system, but I was pleasantly surprised with your simple, yet effective system (although some stats were clearly better than others).

This adventure was short, to the point, and there was a lot packed in. My only critique was that after a while the battles started feeling tedious. However, that might be because I got lost a lot of the time and ran into guards at the same area repeatedly (which I suppose is appropriate for the theme).

Your use of 'Key' was great; not only was the powersuit the key to winning the war, but it was key to blasting your way out of the base. I noticed you also had an electric key in the story; there were a lot of keys.

I liked the way you layered the paragraphs to handle 3, 2, or 1 guards at a time, and getting the powersuit felt AMAZING.

10 out of 10 - would powersuit again!

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Byron-HazeDeveloper3 years ago (1 edit) (+2)

Thanks, I'm really glad you liked it.

Yep, I fully agree that D&D has often been over complicated. Before I stated writing solo adventures I did spend years coming up with fast roleplay game rules for one off sessions when the regular GM could not make it.

I have tried to balance the stats. Strength I figured was the weakest but in playtesting even characters with +1 in it did better than I thought they would. The Luck stat was a last addition and missed out on most of the playtesting. Originally you just got a fixed three rerolls. More tweaking and playtesting is probably in order.

Yes, it is annoying when you keep missing and bouncing between the same few sections, although not so annoying that I did not enjoy playtesting. It is the reason I have the combat paragraphs so close together so that you don't have to go far. If space had not been an issue, there would have been a different set of paragraphs for each encounter and thus greater variation to the experience.

I do keep wondering if I should remind people that after one encounter they are no longer facing the direction they were before it, as they had to turn to face the guards.